It is well known to provide a ceramic thermal barrier coating on a surface of a component that will be exposed to very high operating temperatures. One such component that has received much public notoriety is the United States space shuttle vehicle. More commonplace applications for such technology include the hot combustion gas portions of a gas turbine engine, as may be used for aircraft propulsion or electrical power generation.
Ceramic materials generally have excellent hardness, heat resistance, abrasion resistance and corrosion resistance, and they are therefore very desirable for high temperature machine applications such as gas turbines and the like. However, ceramic materials are easily fractured by tensile stresses and exhibit a high degree of brittleness. To improve upon the fracture toughness of a ceramic thermal barrier coating material, it is known to utilize a columnar grained microstructure. Microstructure gaps between the individual columns allow the columnar grains to expand and to contract with changes in temperature without developing stresses that could cause spalling. Unfortunately, such gaps may close once the component is placed into operation due to the sintering of the sides of adjacent columns.
A crack at the surface of a ceramic material may function to relieve thermally induced stresses in a manner similar to the microstructure gaps of a columnar material. Vertical surface segmentation (i.e. normal to the component surface) will be observed if a material is exposed to thermal cycling or thermal shock resulting in thermal stresses that exceed the strength of the material. The material releases its strain energy by creating the crack surfaces, thereby improving its overall strain tolerance. Such cracks propagate from the free surface into the material and may stop after they reach a certain distance into the material. However, such surface cracks often continue to propagate into the material due to the concentration of stresses at the crack tip, and they may result in catastrophic failure of the ceramic coating and/or underlying component.